economy

Apple-picking is in full swing at the Taedonggang Combined Fruit Farm covering a wide range of more than 1 000 hectares of land.

Truck being loaded with boxes of apples honk on paved roads crossing the fields.

They are busy carrying gathered apples to storehouses.

Those who are picking apples and transporting them are wearing a broad smile on their faces.

On his visit to the fruit farm in August 2015, General Secretary Kim Jong Un said that officials and employees of the Taedonggang Combined Fruit Farm should hand down the history of the love for people unfolded by the great leaders who had worked heart and soul to supply them with larger amounts of fruits by turning the farm into a world-level thriving one for the people, cherishing a high ambition of attaining world supremacy of fruit farming.

The rolling fields are covered with a large number of dwarf apple trees.

It is now cultivating over 50 kinds of apple trees.

This year, too, it has channelled great efforts into manuring and tending fruit trees in a scientific way and striven to increase fruit output despite unfavourable climate conditions.

The farm scientifically applied essential nutritive elements to fruit trees on each plot on analysis of soil condition of each field, said chief engineer Kwak Chol Song.

It also established an insect monitoring and forecasting system to prevent and cure diseases with low cost, thus minimizing the decrease in the per-hectare yield.

Thanks to their painstaking efforts, per hectare yield for this year has been further increased as compared to last year’s.

The farm succeeded in breeding several varieties of being ripened early, bearing large fruits and containing high sugar content. Typical of them are “Cholryong” much favoured by children and the old for its rich juice and proper sugar content of 13.5% and “Kumgang” with strong sweet but less sour taste. They provide smooth chewing feeling, emit strong fragrance and have strong resistance to cold and diseases and bear fruits in a short period of time.

The Dried Fruit Chip Factory and the Taedonggang General Fruit-processing Factory are now busy turning out different kinds of such processed fruit products from gathered fruits as dried apple chips, juice, cider, vinegar, perfume and rinse.

Meanwhile, fresh apples gathered at the farm are supplied to Pyongyang citizens through commercial service facilities in the city.